Solid construction and weight have little to do with one another. One can certainly have a brick of a camera that is built like crap, or a lighter tightly made unit.

Lightweight can also mean plasticky (as the Canon Rebel is IMHO), so I wouldn't say it has "little to do" w/ how solid the construction is.
Engineering is balancing things, including unfortunately cost. To put metals in a body to make it more solid means more weight...

I never had a winder for my ME super. Never needed one, never wanted one, and have v rarely used the continuous mode on any digital camera. I'm not interested in action photos; I do landscapes, and that stuff is not much use for landscapes. Similarly, autofocus is not important, I prefer to compose a picture, focus it and shoot, and the time needed for a manual focus is trivial. YMMV if you do a difft style of photography.

So for my uses, the winder is a red herring: the actual weight of my ME Super body is 445g, plus film: say about 480 grams. The "lightweight" K7 is 50% heavier, at 750g (inc battery_SD card)

Why would you need small/lightweight camera for landscapes? Shuldn't you'll bring atleast tripod and lots of filters anyway? heck, why not using 120film? since you only shoot landscape

Because most of the landscape I like photographing isn't accessible by car, and the less gear I have to carry, the better. The lighter the setup, the more likely I am to be in a place where good photos can be taken.

I'm glad that the K7 isn't any heavier than my very heavy K20D, and any weight-saving is a step in the right direction. But the difference is so small that it will probably be completely un-noticed in use.

dave9t5 pretty thoroughly debunked your statement that since "lightweight" wasn't explicitly qualified as "for its class" that it was somehow a flawed claim, so I won't repeat what he said. There are lighter cameras, and if that is your primary need then definitely look at those other options.

If the K20D is "very heavy" for you, then you're in the wrong product segment. You should be looking at primarily plastic cameras--K2000, Digital Rebel, etc. For the rest of us, the K-7 is plenty small and light for its feature set. Any smaller and it wouldn't be comfortable. Any lighter and it wouldn't be as durable. I think it hits a very nice sweet spot of weight vs. durability, maximizing weight savings as much as possible without sacrificing durability.

Obviously go with what works for you. But the K-7 is relatively lightweight and that's not hype.

dave9t5 pretty thoroughly debunked your statement that since "lightweight" wasn't explicitly qualified as "for its class" that it was somehow a flawed claim, so I won't repeat what he said. There are lighter cameras, and if that is your primary need then definitely look at those other options.

No he didn't.

He quoted an entirely different piece of promotional material, and just repeated the assertion that I should have followed those who inferred into the ad I read some things that it didn't say.

But clearly some people are mortally offended that I criticised Pentax marketing, even though I been a Pentax SLR user for over 20 years, so we'll have to agree to disagree.

Originally posted by Yohan Pamudji

If the K20D is "very heavy" for you, then you're in the wrong product segment. You should be looking at primarily plastic cameras--K2000, Digital Rebel, etc.

I had one overriding reason for not going for those cameras: the Pentax K-m and other models at that end of the market lack the dust-sealing which is needed to cope with the fact that dSLRs are much more vulnerable to dust than film SLRs. With careful design, good sealing should add much to the weight, although it does push up the price.

The other major reason was that I don't want an expensive piece of kit like an SLR body to be wrapped in a flimsy plastic shell. Film SLRs managed to be lightweight despite having a metal case, and the plastic shells are an exercise in cost-savings in tooling and in manufacture rather than lightness. Metal has a higher strength-to-weight ratio than plastic.

I also don't want all the kindergarten scene-setting modes which clutter up the K-m.

Originally posted by Yohan Pamudji

For the rest of us, the K-7 is plenty small and light for its feature set. Any smaller and it wouldn't be comfortable. Any lighter and it wouldn't be as durable. I think it hits a very nice sweet spot of weight vs. durability, maximizing weight savings as much as possible without sacrificing durability.

I'm not really concerned about size, and I having tried the smaller dSLRs, most of them are just too small. My concern is weight.

But the point which you seem to be missing is that lighter doesn't mean less durable: that depends on the strength-to-weight ratio of the materials used. Since the plastics in use are not composites, a plastic-bodied camera has to be a lot heavier to match the strength of a metal one, and a light plastic camera is fragile thing.

Originally posted by Yohan Pamudji

Obviously go with what works for you.

Indeed, and you likewise.

Originally posted by Yohan Pamudji

But the K-7 is relatively lightweight and that's not hype.

Relatively lightweight compared to some bricks which cost twice as much, but still heavy compared with the lightweight cameras which Pentax used to produce.

Those who want all the bells-and-whistles of the K-7 can indeed now get them in a lighter package than the Canikon offerings, and I'm delighted for those who find that works for them. If the K7 as good as the more sober previews suggest, I'm sure that Pentax will justifiably sell lots of them.

But those of who are happy to leave video to video cameras and aren't fussed over the larger screen (which has displaced some handily-located buttons) still have to choose between a brick and a fragile plastic toy.

There's a gap in the market here, which won't be met by Canikon, who seem to delight in keeping their affordable cameras fragile as a marketing distinction from their very expensive models. It's for a robust, lightweight, camera which dumps the things like video that dSLRs do badly, doesn't try to maximise the screen size, and doesn't try to build into the camera tasks which are usually performed off-camera.

In film SLR days, Pentax offered a choice of relatively simple cameras: the K-series and the M-series. K was cheap and heavy, M was pricier and lighter, but their feature sets overlapped a lot. It would be great to see that sort of choice returning.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but all current Pentax DSLRs (including the K-m) have the same plastic outer shell on stainless steel frame. K7 will be the only different one.

Yes, they have a plastic shell, but the K20D appears to be a rather more solid plastic shell. That may just be a mistaken impression, but after poking around several current models from Pentax and Canikon, the K20D appeared to me to be a little more robust. Still plastic, but a bit more of the plastic, to make up for the deficiencies of that material.

Originally posted by TwoLegged

I also don't want all the kindergarten scene-setting modes which clutter up the K-m.

Originally posted by simico

Then don't use them, duh *facepalm* Btw K20D and K7D also have many of those.

Unused settings are just clutter, which gets in the way. Sure, the K20D has some of tehse, but not so many.

Originally posted by simico

Looks like no Pentax DSLR is good enough for you.

Where on earth did you get that weird idea from?

If I didn't think that a Pentax K20D was one of the best of the current crop of dSLRs, I wouldn't have gone out and bought one.

My point is that the choice on offer all falls a long way short of my ideal. A solid but light metal body would suit me much better, and those who want more weight to balance a monster lens could attach a battery pack to add weight, and a few lead weights if that isn't enough.

Yes, they have a plastic shell, but the K20D appears to be a rather more solid plastic shell. That may just be a mistaken impression, but after poking around several current models from Pentax and Canikon, the K20D appeared to me to be a little more robust. Still plastic, but a bit more of the plastic, to make up for the deficiencies of that material.

I think at this point one needs to differentiate "plastic" in general from "polycarbonate" in particular. Whatever deficiencies one typically associates with plastic, not all of them actually apply to polycarbonates. In some ways, a polycarbonate can arguably be a *better* shell (over a steel frame) for an electronic device than most metals. But I'm not a materials scientist, so I'll leave it to others to supply details if Google doesn't settle the matter to your satisfaction.

Quote:

My point is that the choice on offer all falls a long way short of my ideal. A solid but light metal body would suit me much better

Me too, but I think you're being unrealistic about the possibilities. Sure, there were much lighter film cameras, but few of them were weather sealed, they required much less battery power, and in any case they were largely hollow compared to a DSLR.

Me too, but I think you're being unrealistic about the possibilities. Sure, there were much lighter film cameras, but few of them were weather sealed, they required much less battery power, and in any case they were largely hollow compared to a DSLR.

DSLRs are generally heavy, and there seems to be an acceptance by many posters to this thread that this is inevitable. I'm not so sure, partly because it seems to me that the shift to digital imaging has occurred at about the same time as (or shortly after) a shift in the availability of more robust plastics.

Also, DSLR model lives are quite short: 2-3 years seems to be about the max in most cases, compared with up to a decade for film SLRs, so if (as I suspect), plastic bodies are cheaper and/or quicker to tool up for or more suited to robotised production, that may make them a more attractive proposition for a relatively short manufacturing run. Only a guess, but it may be a factor.

Similarly, since a DSLR is likely to be seriously outmoded after five years, manufacturers may be less inclined to make a camera which will take a decade of knocks. The professional photographers I know kept their film bodies for many years, but spend a lot of money changing their digital bodies at a much faster rate.

However, back to what makes DSLRs so heavy. Has anyone actually done or seen an analysis of the weight of DSLRs components? They do need much bigger batteries, but where is the rest of the weight going? Circuitry, screens, or sensors?

It seems to me unlikely that weather-sealing adds much to the weight -- a bundle of small neoprene seals isn't very heavy -- but maybe someone knows different.